


resolved

by crackers4jenn



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-14 02:11:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17499623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: When Annie got home, hurrying, as usual, past the marital aide store where a group of men stood huddled at its entrance, she opened up her lap top and pulled up a list of necessary black mold cleaning supplies before she did any of her usual routines.





	resolved

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on livejournal in May of 2011.

When Annie got home, hurrying, as usual, past the marital aide store where a group of men stood huddled at its entrance, she opened up her lap top and pulled up a list of necessary black mold cleaning supplies before she did any of her usual routines. She didn't lay out her homework, didn't change into something more comfortable. She didn't even scour her fridge for palatable left-overs. Single-minded, she got on Google and researched.

After twenty minutes of diligent site-hopping, she rung up Jeff.

"Got it," she said, before he could say anything. She grinned, feeling darn happy about it, too.

"Great." 

It was the sarcasm in his voice that tugged her out of her glazed over, post-research zone and had her whining, "Je-eff! You said you wanted to help. This whole thing was your idea, anyway, remember? You can't back out, I..." (Formidable pause.) "I won't allow it! I am _forcing_ you to _commit_."

"All I said was 'great'!" 

"Seriously though, if you want to back out, I guess that's okay. I could always recruit Abed..."

"What part of 'great' are you intentionally not getting?" He made some kind of annoyed noise. Geez, so touchy. There was a muffled sound on his end, like he was switching his phone to the other ear. Then, "What insane lengths do we have to go through to get this cleaned up? I assume we'll be looking ridiculous."

"It's _toxic_ ," she stressed. He could take things as lightly as he wanted. Annie, however, was going to compile a list of safety precautions, she was going to color code that list for maximum efficiency, she was going to memorize it, and then, when the time came, she was going to live that list. Because she was not going to spend the rest of her natural born life, however long that was, with mold growing in her lungs.

"Awesome."

"I need to call the dean and confer with him first, but, Jeff," she said, "the sooner we get to this--"

"Yeah, yeah, the sooner we all stop digesting mold flakes."

"Okay, well." She dropped onto her bed, where the comforter was pulled sensibly into tight, precise corners. A little wistfully, she told him, "See you soon!"

 

****

 

"Whi-pped!" sang out Chang, complete with fake-whip reenactment/noises.

Jeff ended his phone call. Then he let his current life mantra run through his head: _ignore it ignore it ignore it_. Hopefully, as per everything else he applied that philosophy to, Chang would go away, or, in the special case of his high cholesterol, become irrelevant.

"Man, she has got you on a _leash_ ," kept up Chang, who was splayed across Jeff's couch with a bowl of popcorn. Which he shoved by the handful into his mouth, no regard for spatial logistics or manners. "How's it feel? You dog. Where's the bone, Winger? WHERE'S THE BONE?"

"Get your feet off my couch."

"Get your _face_ off my _business_ ," snapped back Chang. He dropped the bravado, though, for a low, crazy laugh while he did as told and slipped his legs off of Jeff's expensive furniture. "Kidding, Winger. You know I owe you." He stood up, hands pressed together, and bowed. "Thank you. Thank you," he said again with another solemn bow. 

"Stop."

"Just saying, brother, you have -- Can I call you brother?"

"No."

"Well, I'm gonna. 'Cause that's how close I feel like we've gotten these past few days."

Jeff raised his eyes to the ceiling. There he directed his annoyance and breathed, "Unbelievable."

"YES," Chang forcefully agreed. "Yes. That's what this is. Unbelievable. Thank you," he said on another horribly racist bow. He flopped back onto the couch, turning up the TV's volume so that the _Real Housewives of Atlanta_ marathon he was watching filled the whole room. Popcorn was once again shoveled into his mouth. "Man, that Nene! Crazy, yo."

Jeff stared. For a very long, very judgmental six seconds before heading to his bedroom. "I hate my life," he came to terms with along the way.

Chang, who seriously overheard _everything_ , called down the hall, "Dude, cheer up! Go bone Annie. Tighten--that--leash!"

Disturbing, horrifying, and something Jeff would have to go kill himself over.

 

****

 

A long 38 hours later, Annie joined Jeff at the local hardware/garden/grocery store, since they needed supplies. She had the list. He had the money. She felt guilty about that, like she should somehow be able to temporarily afford, you know, _things_ , and contribute financially, but he snapped at her after her third apology.

"Annie, seriously. Stop and ask yourself what kind of fantasy world we would have to be living in where I would willingly pay out of pocket to clean up Greendale."

Now that he mentioned it, it did seem wildly out of character. She hooked her eyebrow at him, a silent demand for clarification, and he gave it up easy.

"I made the dean cough up the cash. Which he did, after first asking if I liked to -- loaded emphasis -- 'experiment'."

Annie made a face. She liked to think that she was supportive and open-minded about all things in life, no matter how weird it was or previously deemed 'Satan's happy thoughts' by her parents. But, oh boy, the Dean and his crush on Jeff. Yikes.

"Yeah," breathed out Jeff.

"So," she said, deftly changing the subject. She grabbed a huge roll of thick, black tape off a shelf, placing it very importantly in the cart Jeff was pushing. "How should I word this on my college transcripts? _Black mold clean-up_. It's not exactly something you put under _list of achievements._ Or do you? I guess it could count as charity work. You think?"

Jeff had slowed down, and by the time Annie was finished with her musings, having added another roll of tape to their cart, just in case, he was looking at her like she had something growing out of her hair. 

"What?"

He picked up his speed again, taking from her the third precautionary roll of tape she'd grabbed at the last second.

"We might need that!" she defended, while he pushed forward, onto the next aisle.

"We won't. Here's how I know. Because it's the size of a tire."

"But..."

"So," he said, "transferring. You're still thinking about that?"

She laughed. It was dry, almost self-deprecating -- which, coming from Annie, sounded more empty than mean. "I'm cleaning up Greendale for the next generation, Jeff. I don't plan to be a part of that. Besides, after this year, I'll have enough credits that all those dents in my personal life won't matter."

Jeff's response was a thin, distracted smile, one that was aimed at a tall display of gallon-sized mayonnaise. 

 

****

 

When they got to Greendale Community College, lugging from the parking lot the newly acquired soap, duct tape, garbage bags, and elbow-length rubber gloves, there was already somebody waiting in front of the contaminated building.

"Annie!" Rich greeted, friendly and overeager. He was dressed in one of those disposable protective suits. "And Jeff! Hey!"

Annie rushed forward, swept up in a hug that looked, to Jeff's unassuming eyes, way more than platonic. When they let go of each other, Annie stayed nearby, smiling as she explained for Jeff's benefit, "Rich is gonna help out. I figured we could use the extra hand!"

Jeff glued on his biggest, most bullshitting smile. "Great." He couldn't even muster up the enthusiasm to end that on an exclamatory note, too busy wondering where Rich had come from and why he was there. Whatever, yeah. An extra hand meant less time sifting through toxic mold, but what the hell? Annie couldn't have dropped that information earlier? At a time when Jeff could have subsequently said, _Oh, shoot, looks like I can't make it. Guess it'll just be you and Dr. Perfect._

"I hope you weren't waiting too long," Annie said, practically toeing at the ground. 

"I _just_ got here. And! Check it out, you two. Kettle corn! For later, of course, after we spend all that time mold-cleaning, really working up a good appetite."

"Aww," said Annie, beaming at Rich. "That's so sweet. Jeff, isn't that sweet?"

" _The sweetest_." 

Rich caught the sarcasm, pointing his way a _check out this guy_ finger. "Not a kettle corn fan," he deduced.

"That's it," Jeff agreed easily. "I hate kettle corn. You got me."

Rich grabbed the supplies Annie was carrying, making sure to emphasize just how damn gentlemanly he was in doing so, and offered to seal up the contaminated space for them. You know:

"Since I'm a doctor."

Annie actually clasped her hands together, heart-eyed, and allowed it.

"So," Jeff said, while Rich was inside spreading plastic tarps. They were pulling on their own protective suits, which had the texture of cheap toilet paper. That inspired thoughts of safety. "You invited Rich."

Annie, who was in a pair of shorts that could have fit a three year old, was bent over, shoving a distractingly pale leg through her one-size-fits-all jumpsuit and struggling. "I guess I figured quality in numbers. Plus," she said, heaving out a breath while she squirmed the rest of the way into her suit, "he was the only one who signed my volunteer list."

"You made a volunteer list?"

"Jeff, I campaigned to get this place cleaned up! _In front of people._ You didn't think I was just voicing empty promises. Did you?"

"Well, lookie here," came the voice of Dean Pelton before Jeff had time to open mouth: insert foot, popping up from behind some shrubbery. "If it isn't Greendale's number one and number two-hundred-and-thirty-fourth most caring!" Annie, of course, glowed with pride, while Jeff let a disgruntled glower take over. "But, seriously," said the Dean, holding a hand to his mouth, voice dropping a few degrees, "if anyone asks, we're just a couple of pals clocking in some fashion sensitive, extracurricular activities, completely unrelated to TOXIC MOLD SPORES--!" The last part was all but shouted before his voice dipped low again. "Big brother," he mouthed, hinting with a circular hand gesture at a supposed system watching over them.

Annie shared a look with Jeff -- there he might've facially conveyed the fact that everything wrong with this situation was her fault -- then got all peppy and LET'S SAVE THE WORLD! 

"Rich is inside," she chirped. "He's--"

"Inhaling toxic fumes. We voted. He's expendable."

"Jeff!" Annie was giving off her disappointment-eyes, which, Jeff figured, were meant to shame him into a guilt trip. Pshyeah.

"Oh my," went the Dean, clutching at his chest. 

"He's securing the quarters," Annie explained, smug and confident, like Rich was doing something heroic in there. For the record, he was sealing off the molded area with plastic sheeting and tape. Real damn Batman of him.

Just then, like his ego was connected to their conversation, Rich appeared, this sweating, staggering figure taking up the bulk of the entrance. The Dean murmured under his breath, "Well, well," while Annie hummed out this appreciative twinkling noise.

"We have a safe zone," Rich announced. Then, with a grin and a wide, welcoming wave, "Come on in, guys!"

 

**** 

 

Once inside, the full weight of the situation hit. The Dean had locked them in, key and all, with a reassuring, this-is-for-your-own-good excuse of, "Safety precaution..." 

Rich had immediately taken charge, doling out clean-up duties. Worse, when Jeff had instead taken out his cellphone, planning to slack off and text anyone and everyone _911 hostage situation_ , it had been confiscated. By the good doctor.

"What the hell," he snapped.

"Jeff," Annie sighed.

"This is a distraction," Rich said, finding somewhere to pocket the phone. "Not a good idea, Jeff."

"Jeff, look at the mold."

"Protective gear or not, the important thing to remember is that's still the enemy."

"Yeah, Jeff."

"Wow. I think you two have already been infected by fumes. Dean," Jeff sang out, like he was concerned and, dammit, THEY HAD A SITUATION IN HERE, "oh, worst dean ever--"

Annie snatched Jeff up by the sleeve of his jumpsuit. "Excuse us," she said through a huge, plastered on grin aimed at Rich before hauling them to a private corner of the hallway.

"Holy crap, Annie," he complained. Manhandling: never cool. 

"Is this how it's going to be? You're not going to take anything seriously, you're going slack off and pick fights--"

"He started it!" Jeff deflected, waving an accusatory hand Rich's way. Who was inspecting a mold-covered wall, clearly pretending not to be eavesdropping.

Annie stared daggers at him. 

"Grow up, Jeff," she bit out, before flouncing away.

 

****

 

After splitting up (they were going to get through this _so much faster_ that way) Annie tried relaxation methods to chip away her stress. Which! Ha! She knew that class would prove to be useful.

Rich, of course, helped. Even if there was a small part of her that felt embarrassed every time she remembered the awkwardness (slash hurt slash disappointment slash _relief_ ) of getting turned down by him. Which happened roughly every time she looked his way. Still, he was just so nice! And he really was a good friend, and Annie didn't come by those often enough to just go discarding them at the first instance of romantic rejection. If that was the case, she wouldn't be so close with Troy or Jeff.

For a while, they lobbed soap onto the wall and scrubbed in silence, it being so newly exciting and all. There was that same pleased thrill tingling down to the tips of her toes, like how it felt river dredging. They were doing good. They were making a difference! In the footnote of history, there her name would be: Annie Edison; _She Cleaned the Mold._

After some time, though, as it started to sink in that this would take them all day, _at least_ , even if they only took small food and bathroom breaks, the monotony of it got to her. She sank from her kneeled position into a heavy, exhausted, resting one, blowing out a breath that trapped warm air in that space behind her protective surgical mask. 

"Maybe we should've hired professionals," she admitted.

Rich took a step back, so that he lined up beside her. She tipped her head to the side to stare up, up, up at him, and he said, hands on his waist, soapy sponge gripped tight in his right hand, "I think I know what the problem is." (Annie's heart jumped into her throat. It was ridiculous to assume he was hinting at the awkward tension between her and Jeff, but that thought is what opened up and spread out inside of her until she felt it pressing at her finger tips.) And then he squeezed his gross, chemically drenched, traces-of-mold-carrying sponge, right beside her, so that stray drops splashed onto her.

She gasped. First instincts and all. He flared his eyes at her, dipped his sponge into their bucket of clean water. Then did it again.

That time she reeled backwards, out of the way, laughing. 

 

****

 

Jeff could hear their laughter from his hell prison. He could just imagine, too, what was going on in there. Annoyingly adorable flirting over a bucket of soap and suds. 

All he had wanted to do was prove to Annie that, despite his awesome, cynical, hardened outer shell, he was capable of experiencing fleeting moments of idealistic good will. And instead he'd been banished to a storage closet. Where, instead of Annie fluttering over his efforts, abnormally pleased with how easily he was tapping into a non-terrible part of himself, it was just him and the cobwebs and the flecks of mold that WOULD. NOT. COME. OFF no matter the slight effort he put into it.

Annoyed, he threw his sponge at the wall. It being a sponge, it bounced off and flopped onto the floor, unmoving.

"That bad, huh?" came Annie from behind, a smile there in her voice.

Caught, but not willing to concede to acting like a tantrum-throwing child, he snapped, "It's fine. I'm fine."

She came over and picked up his sponge, dipping it in the bucket of cleaning fluids. Wordlessly, but pointedly, she scrubbed at the mold beside him. Strands of her hair were clinging to her face where it was beaded with sweat. A stupid impulse flared -- he wanted to reach out and push that hair away -- but that was suffocated by a mental scream of WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

"See?" Annie said, holding the sponge out to him. "All it takes is a little elbow grease."

The implication being: _quit slacking off, you lazy slacker. Me and Rich have already cleaned through six classrooms and a co-ed bathroom designed for kids with special needs because we're a combined duo of energetic, motivated go-getters who l-o-v-e cleaning up this shithole of a school, yayyyyy!_

For the record, Jeff was not proud of that thought. 

"So," he drawled, "basically what you're saying is, I use it like a sponge. Okay!"

Annie shook her head. He couldn't see her mouth, but he knew it was pulled into a frown. Besides, he _could_ see her eyes, and in them she couldn't hide her disappointment. Which only irritated him further, because what did she expect here? Was there a required character transplant he didn't know about? Did he need to be some card-carrying, pottery-excelling, people-saving saint to clean mold? No assholes admitted! 

Instead of bailing back to Rich, like expected, she grabbed from his dumped collection of extra cleaning supplies (still untouched) another sponge and set to work beside him. He watched for a few slow-moving seconds until it clicked: he was the charity project within a charity project. Save the school, save a soul. That's probably how Annie figured it.

Awesome. Great. Etc.

 

****

 

It was twenty minutes later that Annie stopped scrubbing at the mold.

"Why," she cried, "isn't this cleaning!?" And then she threw her sponge to the ground, causing Jeff to smirk.

Because he was an asshole, he dialed up the snark and lectured, " _Whaaaaat_? All you need is a little elbow grease, Annie."

She made noises behind her mask, these sounds that had Jeff instinctively shielding himself. Sure enough, she started swatting at his shoulder.

"Don't!" Swat. "Tell me!" Harder swat. "What I need!" Swat swat swat. 

He ducked away, stifling a laugh. Her whole face -- what he could see of it, anyway -- was red and glossy with sweat, and her hair, even pulled up into a bun on top of her head, was a mess of loose, stringy strands.

Jeff felt for her a swell of fondness. No one else could've looked half as adorable as she did, coated in toxic mold. It was a dangerous line of thinking -- adorableness inevitably led to _hey, are those boobs?_ which led to _men and women have meaningless sex all the time!_ which led to _sure, explain that to the hordes of angry people wielding pitchforks and THOU SHALL ONLY DEFILE THOSE OF APPROPRIATE AGE signs_ which led to _god, that's hot_ which circled back around to an internal warning noise of incoming danger.

And then Rich appeared, effectively smothering any affection Jeff might have been feeling.

"Hey there, you two!" he chirped, like: _what a surprise! of all the closed off rooms we're locked in, look who I run into!_ With a thumbs up, he surveyed their 3-foot section of cleanliness and complimented, "Wow, guys, nice job. A-plus for effort." 

Annie scooped up her recently thrust sponge. Toyed with its corners. "It's a dent."

"Annie," Rich admonished. "Every dent makes a difference."

Like his approval was all the validation she needed, she slipped back into chipper mode. "Of course! You're right."

Rich just stood there in the doorway, hands on his hips, a gleam of what Jeff felt reasonably okay with diagnosing as insanity in his eyes. And then he clapped his hands together. "Alrighty! I'm gonna get back to work! K.C. break in ten, okay?"

"Okay!" Annie agreed with a similar, horrible level of pep.

After Rich had fist pumped the air and gone back to his own section of mold, Jeff drawled, "Kay cee?"

"K.C. Kettle corn?" 

" _Yay._ "

Jeff saw a twitch in her protective mask, and her eyes were much softer than earlier. "I thought you and Rich were cool now?"

" _Cool_?" he mocked back.

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"Acquaintances. Friends?"

Jeff, with a lot of exaggerated annoyance, slapped his sponge to the wall. A thick, bubbly soap trail oozed out and slid towards the floor boards. He scoffed, "Annie, I'm a grown-up. Grown-ups don't have _friends_. We have people we're forced to spend time with. Sometimes, if we're lucky, those are the people we also sleep with. There's co-workers, the mailman. The guy who bags your groceries. There aren't _friends_." 

And he realized, right then, right after, what he was implying about the study group, which Annie probably considered her closest group of friends complete with mental scrapbooks and fictional charm bracelets.

"Oh," she said, small and hurt, but covering. She turned to dip her sponge in the bucket of soap and water, shoulders sagging. 

He waged an internal war: ignore? profusely apologize? backtrack and claim temporary moral incompetence?

But Annie jerked back up, work abandoned. She shook her gloves dry, sending drops of water to thwack against the plastic tarp. 

"We should keep working. We've still got a lot of ground to cover."

And then she backed out there, off to Rich.

 

****

 

Four hours later, the Dean reappeared to let them out. 

"Well hey there, you couple of overachieving workaholics," he greeted, loudly. "How was that STUDYING? Hm? That... sporous... toxic... acquisition of knowledge? Everything... _clean_ , ACADEMICALLY SPEAKING?"

Annie pulled off her face mask and frowned a little, but she played along. "Yep! All prepared. For future... mold-free essays?"

The dean made a noise of disappointment, then heaped upon them words of gratitude. Jeff got the extra-touchy version, complete with ab-groping and bicep-fondling.

"Well," he said, dragging it out, because: how to put it kindly? "This has been... the worst. And I say that as someone who is forced to redefine that word on a weekly basis."

Just shy of sliding close and mussing Jeff's hair up a bit, Rich let out an aww-shucks sound. "So we didn't convert you into a full-fledged do-gooder? Darn it. Hey, maybe next time!"

Stripped of her protective suit, Annie stood there between Rich and Jeff, delicately holding her rubber gloves. She concentrated on pulling them inside out, careful not to touch the wet, still soapy outsides.

 

****

 

The ride to Annie's place was made in near-silence. Wiped out, she curled into the passenger seat, focused her attention on the passing scenery. Every once in a while she heaved out a long, pointed breath, but Jeff -- being a grown-up, thank you -- wasn't going to engage in what felt like an unbalanced dynamic. She was, ladies and gentlemen, having a tantrum. She was pissed off because he'd implied they weren't friends, and instead of calling him out on it, she was going to sit there and stew and mope and vigorously exhale, expecting him to do whatever romantic bullshit teenagers were being spoon-fed by current pop culture.

Instead, Jeff untensed every tightly wound muscle in his body. It was easier that way. Easier to disengage, to the point that their relationship became blurry, unidentifiable except by the most obvious features: Jeff was an adult, she was a kid. Who happened to be, by circumstance, his friend. Yeah, okay. So sometimes, when the edges sharpened, what snapped into focus was an undeniable mutual attraction, a kinship. When he bothered to look closer, he saw in Annie, not just, on their worst days, an overly naive, just-out-of-teenagehood girl he'd come to have a hell of a soft spot for, but he saw the darker parts, too, the selfish parts. The woman she, at 30, at 35, would fill into. Self-possessed, but guarded. Happy, but working too hard at it.

Annie sighed again, at once childish and something else -- something not altogether unwanted, something slightly domestic. 

"Thanks for all your help today," she said after a moment, but with a note of strict formality. Hell, he'd heard her say the same to Rich, only Rich got a smile, a hug, a slow release.

 

****

 

Once home, Jeff headed straight for the kitchen, where he banged through cupboards looking for something, anything, with alcohol, preferably with the power to numb.

"Dude," called out Chang, still on the couch. Jeff focused briefly on that one word: still. It set off in his head this whole psychotic scenario where he hauled Chang up and forcefully relocated him outside his apartment. "You look like crap." Instead of popcorn, in his lap was Jeff's left-over pizza, Jeff's beer, and Jeff's once upon a non-consensual roommate ago stashed package of Twizzlers.

A muscle in Jeff's jaw twitched. 

"Woahhhhhh. Relax, Winger, take a breather." Chang eased into a sitting position, legs swinging off the side of the couch. He patted the cushion beside him. "Come sit, tell Uncle Chang your problems. I am _here_ for you, brother. Say the word. Say any word. I mean it. Hey. Look at these pecs. These are pecs primed and ready for man-tears." There was more patting.

Repulsed, Jeff turned instead to his bedroom. The sole Chang-free section of his apartment.

"HEY! JEFF! DID YOU BONE ANNIE?"

 

****

 

Annie went through her daily routines. The same ones previously abandoned days earlier, when the idea of mold-scrubbing with Jeff seemed so intoxicatingly full of possibilities. 

Of course, though, where she expected to solidify their often rocky friendship through shared physical labor, Jeff had instead reopened an old wound. The idea that her relationship with her friends at Greendale meant more to her than it did to them. That she was expendable. No more meaningful than -- who had Jeff mentioned? The mailman. A neighbor.

Annie slipped into her pajamas -- a button down, short-sleeved shirt, some frilly cotton pants -- thinking as she did, as the cartoon-bird-and-hearts covered fabric slid over her, that it really was no wonder that Jeff disassociated himself from her as often as he could. I mean, she was putting on sleepwear better suited for a young girl.

That thought carried her over to her vanity, where she sunk onto the rickety, thrift store-bought chair in front of it. Its paint was chipped and peeling, always leaving white flakes that festered into the carpet. _Like snow_ she once would have dreamily imagined, but that, too, seemed to belong to a child. She pulled out her brush, dragged it through her hair. She did this without thinking, her mind primarily focused elsewhere.

It's not like she still had lingering feelings for Jeff -- or maybe she did. Or, realistically, maybe she never actually did in the first place. Maybe it was a transference thing. She couldn't be with Troy, because Troy had Abed, so she projected those feelings she once had for him onto the nearest available suitor. Right?

Still, that wouldn't explain the flustered, nervous feeling she got sometimes when Jeff smiled at her just so. Or how she kept thinking, any time they were alone -- and, oh, they wound up being alone more often than usual lately -- how she'd like to stand or sit or be closer to him, that it'd be nice to have an excuse to touch. Outside of her summer-long daydream, where she'd spent the time half in a state of overwhelming hope, the other half in panic and insecurity and neurosis, her thoughts about Jeff were normally tame, purely platonic.

Sure, every now and again she felt feverish with the _what if..._ possibility of being kissed by him. Or she replayed an embarrassing amount of times how she'd nearly driven him to strip, nearly did so herself. Over what? A pen? 

But she'd confronted him. Despite every magazine article that preached to the contrary, Annie, in a fit of frustration, cornered Jeff in the men's room and demanded an answer to why he never cared about her love life until it was that she had the possibility of one, and why, then, if he wasn't interested in her did he try and sabotage potential relationships -- why the heck did he care so much when she found a reason to move on if that was all he'd ever wanted in the first place?

Here, Annie found herself collapsing, arms spread out, onto her bed. It would've been nice to have had a lovely, melancholic soundtrack to go with her souring thoughts, but what she had was the downstairs activity of the marital aide store. Even at 10:40 p.m. it was a bustling, seedy business, one amplified by a loudspeaker advertising hot deals. Those announcements crawled up their shared wall and echoed dimly into her living space.

 

****

 

Temporary insanity. That was what had Jeff knocking at Annie's door.

With the pulse of the downstairs porn store rattling through the floorboards, the noises coming from Annie's apartment were indistinguishable. He thought he heard padded footsteps, maybe a heavy hand against the door frame while she peered through the peephole. But the seconds dragged on, in which Jeff not only had time to reflect on how ridiculously insane what he was doing now was, but how irrevocably, unprecedentedly dumb it was, too.

He heard the weighty thunk of a dead bolt being unlocked, the scratching of a chain, and then. Then Annie was there, face newly scrubbed and pulled into a confused frown. Because that was the thing about Annie. She had the decency to not expect the worst out of you. 

"Jeff? What are you..." She abandoned that question to blurt out the more obvious: "It's _late_!" That was a scandalized hiss, too, said with the same emphasis words like _failure_ and _lesbian_ got. 

He didn't know what to say, because everything in his head sounded overly-sentimental, and it all circled back around to the same thing: she would want way more out of him than he could give. And not just because he was allergic to commitment. 

Her eyes widened: _WELL?_ they said.

It felt like being on the precipice of a tall ledge. The decision to drop the pretense and the bullshit and man up and admit that, to a worrying recurrence, he liked Annie, was like the wind at his back, pushing him that much closer to the edge. 

She opened the door wide, a wordless invitation, and he slipped through. And that was it. That was his decision, whether he realized it or not. He stepped far enough inside that she could close the door soundly behind him, which she did while he stood and took in the decor sprawled out in the single room before him. Fluffy things were all over. On the couch, on chairs, on countertops, on her bed -- there, his line of sight lingered, taking in the slight dent, the suggestive imprint left behind.

"Jeff," Annie said, as a forced out laugh. "You're acting weird. Is everything okay?" He turned to see a quick flare of panic had taken over, and she worried, "Is it the mold? Did you get--" Scandal, horrors! "-- _contaminated_?"

He snorted. With it, clarity filtered through. It didn't have to be complicated. It didn't have to be monumental or meaningful, either, this _whatever_ it was between them. It could be tentative and weird as hell and probably not a very good idea because holy crap Britta would shame him and Shirley would throw her purse at his head and who knows what hellishly disturbing things Pierce would have to say, but he didn't care. He didn't care, and that was freeing.

Still concerned, Annie slid over to her kitchen. This tiny, linoleum-covered area that looked more like it belonged in a gas station than an apartment, with its antiquated appliances, its fluorescent glow. All that was missing was a sign advertising two-for-one chili dog deals. She turned on the tap, filled a glass up with water. Offered it to him, like she expected in doing so to medicate his potential mold-sickness.

But he turned it down, came up close. She looked cornered. Trapped. He said, "Don't say anything," and took the water away from her. 

More of a breathy inhale than anything, she said, "Jeff," while she stepped back, caught against the waist-high counter. Her hands immediately grappled for support, and she leaned back, arched, at the same time that Jeff ducked down. Her eyes were huge, broadcasting a hundred different thoughts and worries and feelings, and they were still open when he kissed her. 

Too new, too unsure, Annie just hung there tense and stiff against him, like this was some kind of hypothetical experiment he was testing out. Her knuckles were white from how hard she was gripping the countertop, but her legs felt boneless, wobbly, tingly like ants were crawling up and down branches of veins and slivers of muscle.

She pulled back, away. Abrupt and not really thinking about what she was doing, but thinking, instead, _why now_?

Even though there was hardly any moving room between them, she folded her arms across her chest, hauled her head back. Voicelessly insisted upon an explanation. Jeff smirked, which made her scoff, and she thumped him on the chest for it. 

"JEFF," she complained. "Be serious!"

"I am!" 

"You look like a cat with a canary. All... _slick_ and _smug_. Why are you doing this?" she demanded, a brief back-and-forth gesture between them.

"Well," he said, and his tone was casual, teasing, "when two people like each other--"

For that, he got another swat at his chest, making him smile -- Chang's _whipped!_ rattled briefly in his head -- and relent.

"Why not? Seriously. Who cares?"

Her eyes flicked down to his throat. She watched him swallow. Something coyish and flirty took over, and she lifted a shoulder in an easy, carefree shrug. Tested him. "We could keep it casual. Fun."

Jeff knew Annie enough to know that those two words may have been in her vocabulary, but she had no idea how to apply them to real life situations. Casual? Please. She stressed through the entirety of her relaxation classes. 

There was something about Annie's unguarded look that came next that shifted the tension into new territory. She lifted up on her toes, bobbing there between them. Eyes on his. They flared, not unlike another time they kissed. And just like that time, the reaction he had was a hooked feeling in his gut that snared, then tugged him towards her.

She was so young -- she was stupidly naive, and it would be days, DAYS, before he found notebook pages filled with _Mrs. Annie Winger_ , how much do you wanna bet? No question. That would happen.

Jeff kissed her, and didn't care.

 

****

END.


End file.
